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The game, based on WEG's earlier Ghostbusters RPG, established much of the groundwork of what later became the Star Wars Expanded Universe, and its sourcebooks are still frequently cited by Star Wars fans as reference material. Lucasfilm considered the West End Games' Star Wars sourcebooks so authoritative that when Timothy Zahn was hired to write what became the Thrawn trilogy, he was sent a box of West End Games Star Wars books and directed to base his novel on the background material presented within.

In 1992 West End Games published the second edition of the game, in which the title remained unchanged. In 1996 a revision of the second edition saw the light of day, but its title was slightly changed from Star Wars: The Roleplaying Game - Second Edition to The Star Wars Roleplaying Game: Second Edition - Revised and Expanded.[1]

By the end of the game's run around 140 sourcebook and adventure supplements were published for the game during its run through three editions.[2]

In addition fifteen issues of a magazine series, the Star Wars Adventure Journal, were published between 1994 and 1998. The Adventure Journal was published in novel format of around 280 pages, and consisted of adventures and articles for the game, plus short stories intended to provide inspiration for gamemasters and news relating to Star Wars.

WEG's license to produce Star Wars material was lost after the company declared bankruptcy in 1998, and the license was later picked up by Wizards of the Coast, who held the license until 2010. On 2 August 2011, Fantasy Flight Games announced that they had entered into "comprehensive licensing partnership with Lucasfilm Ltd. for the worldwide rights to publish card, roleplaying, and miniatures games set in the popular Star Wars universe".[3]

Star Wars: The Roleplaying Game won the Origins Award for Best Roleplaying Rules of 1987.[4]

The Imperial Doublecross, published in 1997, wasn't part of the Solitaire Adventure series and used the Star WarsD6 rules and character's die codes.

The Lightsaber Dueling Pack[16] and Starfighter Battle Book[17] were picture gamebooks, presenting viewpoint series of pictures and the possible next courses of action, similar to Ace of Aces.

In the early 1990s, before the advent of the modern Internet, the FidoNet Star Wars Echo ran a message forum for playing the West End Games Star Wars Roleplaying Game on-line on computer bulletin board systems. The game also gathered a large internet following via such mailing lists such as the SW-RPG Mailing List.